Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday February 15, 2013 @12:33PM
from the only-if-they-knew-how-to-play-nice-with-others dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft is leaving billions of dollars on the table by not porting Office to the iPad, according to a new analyst report. That analyst, Morgan Stanley's Adam Holt, believes that Office for iOS would sell to approximately 30 percent of all iPad users; priced at $60 per copy, that comes to a grand total of $2.5 billion per year — minus Apple's cut of the revenues, of course. But does Microsoft actually want Office for iOS out there? It's not necessarily in the company's best interest to rush such a platform to market, even if billions of dollars potentially hang in the balance — it's too busy pushing Office as a cloud-based, OS-agnostic platform. And Microsoft has another reason, aside from pushing the cloud version of Office, to de-emphasize the prospect of its productivity software on iOS: In a bid to draw more customers to its new hardware, Microsoft preloaded its Surface RT tablets with Office; offering the software on a rival touch-screen would take a major selling point off the table."

Then let's consider Microsoft could actually produce office tools which make the best use of a Tablet or Smart Phone. I find their tools to be a challenge even with a keyboard and mouse - too much feature bloat.

Office-type applications will never be a good fit for tablets and smartphones. The applications are primarily used for content creation. The devices are primarily useful for content consumption, and suck at content creation in almost every conceivable way, starting with having tiny screens and having no fast, accurate way to input data.

Apple sells more iPads than any single PC maker sells ANYTHING with Windows 7 or 8 on it. To play semantics at this point is the same as just deciding MS Office isn't going to run on Dells anymore.

There is no "business case" to avoid iOS. iOS is growing like crazy, so a SMART business is gonna figure out how to get Office to run... There are plenty of wannabe office suits on iOS now. There's a great big giant opportunity to make piles of money. $2 billion is 5%'er even in the corporate world... It shows

the $2 billion 'estimate' is based on 30% sales to every ipad sold.. which is a bit over 120 million worldwide.

i think most ipads are used mainly as toys (games, email, browsing, chatting, facebook and twitter shit, etc), not for actual 'work'.

imho, your 1% is a little low, that 30% is way high. perhaps 10-15% of ipads in north america and europe, and other "first world" (for lack of better term) markets

To build on your point, I think looking at the sales numbers (if such can be found) on the iWorks applications from Apple would at least give a better baseline than the guess they are making. If you could make a reasonable assumption on business's adoption of Office instead, then you would have a guess based more on facts.

I have an iPad I use at work every day. I use iWorks to review documents sent to me and it does an OK job as long as long as the documents are fairly standard. Unfortunately, the default

Businesswise, it may well be. Office on iPad could make a lot of money, true. But a successful alternative to the iPad, controlled by MS with an MS app store? That's a lot more money. If Microsoft are to rival Apple they need ever advantage they can get, and Office exclusivity is a big advantage.

Businesswise, it may well be. Office on iPad could make a lot of money, true. But a successful alternative to the iPad, controlled by MS with an MS app store? That's a lot more money. If Microsoft are to rival Apple they need ever advantage they can get, and Office exclusivity is a big advantage.

And according to a recent/. article, if I could snare an asteroid, bring it into earth orbit and mine the sucker I'd be able to pocket $195 billion, if, if, if. Here's a few bit more supposition: Microsoft is not going to make a dent in Apple's share of the mobilem market much less Google's Android OS empire just like that ** snaps fingers **. The bigger threat is Google so another option would be to accept this reality and make tons of money backing Apple against Google by releasing MS office for iOS but not Android. That would hurt Google/Android in the enterprise market since you'd instantly have a cloud enabled Office suite that is cross platform over Windows, Windows Phone, OS x and iOS with native and web apps but not on Android. Google is the bigger threat, business is war, war creates odd alliances.

If it doesn't have a start button, it doesn't work. Look at the damned button migrating to all Microsoft apps (that damned ribbon shit with the nice shiny big round button). Hell, they love that shit so much they made it take over the entire screen with Windows 8!!!

That's the mindset, but it doesn't work that way. The rest of the tablet ecosystem makes documents that work together, outsells Windows laptops, and is growing fast while another failed MS tablet adds a reason to avoid MS Office on Windows desktops. De-Facto standards aren't guarantees, see: DBase & Lotus products.

Why are you including the OS X iWork apps in your figures? This article is just about a potential iOS version of Office. If you want to include OS X apps, then you have to include Office for Mac, which costs a minimum of $90 by itself.

For the record, though, I think that $60 would be a reasonable price, so long as it has full compatibility and the majority of Office's desktop features.

TFA is riddled with retarded assumptions. Too many times have I seen things like "I think 30% of all people would buy it", based on muddy facts or even no facts at all. GAAAH!

Not only that, but the article positively reeks of Apple fanboism. That said, yes, I do have Apple hardware but it is strictly utilitarian. I don't believe any one technology is superior to the other. Surface, Android, and iPad have upsides and downsides. For me, the decision came down to the accuracy of the on-screen keyboard and Apple won that battle. The trade off for having a keyboard well suited to my fingers is a locked down, walled garden. For others, this is not as important.

This might make sense if it was an Android tablet. MS could include this as part of licensing and gain revenue from every tablet that a firm owns. More likely, however, it would be a rear guard action, insuring that users continue to use the MS products as they do more editing on mobile devices.

As far as iPad goes, MS Office for iPad would just be a profit center for Apple(30%? of sale price goes to Apple) and would solidify the iPad as The Tablet, something that MS clearly does not want to happen given

Do 30% of desktop users even buy Office? I can't remember the last time I saw a home computer with it on, instead of Open/Libre Office or whatever kludge comes preinstalled with an OEM Windows install. I'd guess that the number of desktops and laptops with Office installed is roughly identical to the number of machines used for business purposes, plus the number of people who are easily talked around by the salesman with a special offer in Currys.

There are already office suites for iOS that can read Microsoft files, including one from Apple with cloud syncing and other "stuff". So what is it about Office that would attract iOS users? It cant be the Microsoft brand, its not going to be file compatibility, so what is it?

I'm on Android, which offers several quite good Office suites as well, and use MS Office for work. 2 main issues with the Android office suites, probably the same as on iOS:

1- Features. I'm always missing something such as style sheets, smart headers/footers, outline mode,... let alone macros which I don't use that much2- Compatibility. Importing/exporting files always results in a few issues, not only for unsupported features of course, but also for supported ones that are just a bit off. As soon as you need to shuttle docs back and fort between true MS Office and some clone, headaches happen. Unluckily, the clones don't have a Windows version.

I think that's a problem Microsoft may have run into by waiting to release on iOS version of Office (if they ever do): some have learned that they don't need Office at all. In our household the one machine with Office is the Windows laptop my wife uses for work. Everything else gets done in Apple's iWork on either a Mac or iOS device. We own several copies of Office for Mac, but I eventually just quit installing it on new machines. We get along just fine.

There are a TON of options, one has but to look. Everything from full sized desktop keyboards to integrated keyboard/case systems. The only thing lacking is imagination. Anything with a built in keyboard ALREADY MAKES COMPROMISES IN FORM FACTOR, so its no different if you add one later.

It has superb ergonomics for certain things--mostly relating to web browsing. I don't need a laptop. I have a desktop, with two screens. It's getting old, but I'm not sure that I'll replace it with a laptop.

As a user I want to see the product on as many platforms as possible. Can't argue that. As a company Office is one advantage that this Surface turd may actually have. Best to see how it fares before killing any chance of success by making it available to the tablet leader and just making Apples life easier and their stronghold stronger. The payoff could be huge compared to the 2.5B the could get from IOS Office. (they pulled that # out of their ass right DNRTFA).

In context to your quotes by the measure of a CEO its share value, Ballmer is doing an awful lot better than Cook

Have you actually looked at the stocks? Apple [google.com] has gone from $7.50 in 2003 to over $464 at the time I write this. Microsoft's [google.com] stock over the same period is essentially unchanged. It was around $25 in 2003 and still is. Cook has been in charge for roughly one year [google.com] and the stock had a huge run up during that time but is now basically back to where it was when he started as CEO.

Frankly Tim Cook hasn't been on the job long enough to really tell how he is doing. We'll have a better idea in another year. Bal

Frankly Tim Cook hasn't been on the job long enough to really tell how he is doing

Apples shares have been in freefall from 705 to 450...and that is under Tim Cook...and his response to this has been *nothing*..Shares rose under Elop too...for a few months. The reality is you might want Cook to catch his breath settle in, but right now Apple is burning. Shareholders are calling for Tim Cook to do something with those Billions, the reality is it might be a little late.

Didn't you prove his point? Tim Cook got the position when the stock value was very high. Some would argue insanely too high. He's only been in charge for a year. Ballmer has been at the helm of MS for 10 years in which the stock hasn't really moved.

The reality is you might want Cook to catch his breath settle in, but right now Apple is burning.

Yes because in the other last earnings report, Apple lost billions and failed to sell any products . . . no wait the opposite happened. It's because of impatient and shortsighted investors that expect every company to earn 30x what they did before. They ar

Microsoft would make a mistake by not providing some sort of native client for popular platforms. Accessing Office through a browser is fine for some but it requires a constant internet connection and can be less responsive than native code. If Microsoft forces iPad (and other tablet users) to use Office 365, they will be making a big usability sacrifice on behalf users that don't need or want it. Better to canibalize your own sales than to leave yourself exposed to competitors (ala iPod v. iPhone.)

This is economically stupid though. Office is about half of MS in terms of profit. Damaging their Office business just to support selling Surface (which seem to not sell that good anyway) would be totally silly. And for Windows the writing is on the wall anyway. They won't ever get back into those good old 95% of the market times.

MS should have come with MS Office for Android and iOS long ago. THIS market still is solidly in their hands.

One of them is that someone would pay $60 for an iOS version of Microsoft office when there are capable software better suited for the iPad for around $10 per application and they are compatible with Office. Microsoft knows this and wisely licenses its file API instead of diminishing their brand.

I'd pay $10 for MS Office for a mobile device if it contained Word, Excel and PowerPoint because that's what I see a lot of other full fledged office suites going for. I might even go in for $15 but I would have to consider it. $20 would be an absolute maximum unless I was using it very heavily every day.

Are you serious? It cost more to have lunch at Mcdonalds with the family. If you are using it heavily, at $60 it would pay itself off in no time. I don't have a tablet but i did purchase the Home Office edition 2010 and I have long since forgotten about that $100 bucks or whatever it was. If it has value to you why would $20 be some magic cutoff point? The free alternatives are there for everyone anyway. If the free versions don't do what you need and you really "need" that functionality the difference

A lot of business customers would buy the official MS Office app because none of the alternatives are 100% compatible. 95% maybe, but they often lack important features like change tracking that businesses make extensive use of. The cost of the app is far less than the cost of wasted time dealing with incompatibilities and limitations.

That is true. However you need to consider that Microsoft would do this at the expense of their Microsoft Surface tablets. I think Microsoft would want to use Office as a asset to get Surface in the enterprise.

I think Microsoft would want to use Office as a asset to get Surface in the enterprise.

Alternately, they could just drop Surface and probably make more in the process. I think going OS and hardware agnostic is probably the best for them long term. It'll mean that they have to acknowledge that they're going to take a big drop in profit though. That'll hurt their near future stock price more than pretending that they have a viable business model for the next ten years.

Unless everyone using an iOS device also has an external keyboard and mouse, an office suite (whether my MS or Google, or ) just does not work. No one is going to type up any sort of real-world document using their two thumbs on their iPhone. Even with a large screen on the iPad, typing is much more efficient using a keyboard. Navigating neighboring cells in a spreadsheet is quicker with the arrow keys than pointing with one's finger. I could go on and on about the ergonomics of doing office-application wor

If the task is going to take a few minutes or less then an iPad seems to work just fine. If the task is going to take longer than that then an external bluetooth keyboard makes it quite practical to use an iPad for lightweight word processing and spreadsheet needs. As your normal day-to-day work environment, no, but when you are out and about I think it can be quite practical for some. This opinion is based on use of Apple's Pages and Numbers apps for Mac and iOS.

You're correct on all points. However, those external keyboards aren't cheap. On average, they even cost more than the suggested $60 for the office suite. (Most of the ones I'm seeing from both Google and reviews average around $100.) Let's just say the total package is somewhere between $100 and $150 for both keyboard and office suite. If you compare that to the total cost of using any one of the popular apps on iOS devices, it doesn't seem so appealing. I'm not saying that it can't work for some. However,

Just wanted to also add that if the task is only going to take a few minutes, it seems really hard justifying the $60 pricetag for something you are only going to use for "just a few minutes." And if you had lots and lots of tasks that each only take "just a few minutes" then wouldn't you be better off using "the real deal" (i.e. an actual computer with the full application suite)?

Just wanted to also add that if the task is only going to take a few minutes, it seems really hard justifying the $60 pricetag for something you are only going to use for "just a few minutes." And if you had lots and lots of tasks that each only take "just a few minutes" then wouldn't you be better off using "the real deal" (i.e. an actual computer with the full application suite)?

Sometimes I prefer to travel light. Lets say a 5 hour flight. If I am only going to work on documentation and not do any coding I may prefer an iPad plus Bluetooth keyboard over a laptop. Lets say its just a lunch time meeting where I had only planed on presenting info but the other party would like to make a small change (or I had noticed a small error), I may prefer only the iPad and just use the onscreen keyboard. It all depends on the job at hand, different tools for different jobs.

I predict the iPad (and all tablets for that matter) are little more than a fad. I know people who bought them(iPad as well as Samsung Galaxy). They were a fun toy for a couple of weeks and now they collect dust (except for when the kids play an occasional game). These same people who bought them are back to using their laptops and full-sized PCs. The rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.

More importantly, when the full-OS (or rather the dual/touch aware full-OS) tablets come out, and you no longer have to buy two devices - a tablet for consumption and a laptop for heavier work - the tablets will decline in value. Their advantage is a 1.5lb screen-only device that is quick and easy for small tasks. Now that full intel tablets are going into sub 2lb territory, the only thing left is the App market for full/dual OS (like Metro) and the longer battery life. The former will get fixed with time a

I have been using a galaxy note 10.1 for a couple weeks and that's really useful in my job. Reading and annotating articles on it is a breeze. I can easily provide annotations simply for collaborators on the other side of the world (or just not in their office right now) without having to print the document, annotate it on paper, scan it and send it back by email.

It is definitively useful to me. Of course, reading, writing and annotating takes a significant portion of my time. I understand it might not be e

Your observations do not reflect mine. I've stopped taking my laptop to and from work because I find that the tasks I want to do at home (browsing, email, and streaming video) are better suited to the iPad. I'd much rather wake the iPad (near-instant) than use the laptop which takes more than two seconds to wake from sleep (first-world problems). The iPad is far less awkward to use in a casual setting like a couch or big, comfy chair and is more comfortable to read on, too (I have several digital magazine s

I predict the iPad (and all tablets for that matter) are little more than a fad. I know people who bought them(iPad as well as Samsung Galaxy). They were a fun toy for a couple of weeks and now they collect dust (except for when the kids play an occasional game). These same people who bought them are back to using their laptops and full-sized PCs. The rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.

If laptops get their bulk down to tablet-level and their battery life up to tablet-level, then maybe. Laptop battery life is roughly the same and possibly worse than it was 20 years ago, though, not better (granted, the laptops have much better displays and cpu power these days - but it ate up all of the advances in battery tech).

When I spend an entire day in meetings with sub-teams on a large project, I can carry only my tablet from meeting room to meeting room, use up less than half the battery during th

All Microsoft would have to do is offer better functionality than Apple's offerings do. I upgraded Numbers both on my iMac & my iPhone to the tune of $30 so I could take advantage of the new iCloud features, but I'm sorely disappointed. The iPhone app is atrocious. Spreadsheets just sort of float on the screen. You'd expect them at least to be anchored to the top & left like most other spreadsheet programs I've downloaded are. If I would have known it was that bad, I would have passed on it.

I would say the numbers would be much more likely to look like this. 3% of iOS users would buy it for $6.

Some idiot thought all our management needed iPads, one month later and 90% of the managers don't even touch the device while at work. It's not a productivity tool and a high priced productivity app is not going to be popular when everyone already has laptops with full features and function.

If Microsoft does not make Office software available on the platforms that people are using, those users will find other offerings. The document is not the king of the hill it once was. The more people use an alternative the less relevant the file type becomes. When the.doc.xls hegemony is broken then Windows and Office are directly less relevant. MS could push office all it wants, but if the world wants Linux or Mac or iOS or Android, office is no longer enough reason to change or shift platforms.

Calling Microsoft Office "productivity software" is hilarious. I know we've all spent hours trying to do the simplest things with Office. I recently spent nine hours including querying a forum and Googling trying to figure out how to get Word to number equations. Nine hours, and all I got was a clumsy work-around. And I know this is the "right answer" and that I didn't miss something.

I've been using Open Office / Libre Office for at least 5 years now. It does more than I would ever need it to. Honestly... it has too much. So I don't see how there's even a market anymore for Microsoft Office, cloud or not.

A lot of people can certainly use OpenOffice and any of its derivatives, but a lot is still using Microsoft Office. It's also very popular in businesses, often in connection with other Microsoft products like Microsoft Sharepoint. Microsoft Outlook and Exchange alone is a big reasons why businesses stay with Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office is far away from dying, it's not even close. And truth be told Microsoft Office is certainly not a bad product. It works seemingly well and has a decent price.

I had a little look at what office would cost me. £220($340) for the crippled version £389.99($605) for the full version. I have used LibreOffice(originally openoffice) and it even has advantages over Microsoft Office its not just bad value. Its insanely overpriced.

The geek always quotes retail list for the most expensive version of Office he can find.

Lets get a few things right. I've never been a geek, and only ever seen that word used by bullies. The price is for the version I am eligible. Just because other people are entitled to discounts in educational for Microsoft self serving reasons does not mean I am. I personally have had no problems using LibreOffice...but them its pretty similar to every other office product ever.

We just switched from Open Office to MS Office 2010.1 - It's generally more user-friendly for the tasks most of our users need to do2 - It looks better, the interface is more aesthetic (surprisingly important when dealing with non-technical users)3 - Easier to push out updates4 - Better compatibility with outside vendors5 - Better support

This is utterly frustrating and totally true. I think having to purchase a ridiculously overpriced software in order to usefully send documents to each other is against humanity and detrimental to society. We should all be using an open format for documents - especially for future compatibility. Pages for Mac is exactly like this, too.:( I'm surprised this is not the number one reason you've moved to MSOffice though.

Business is still the big market. No manager wants to risk their big presentation on having not-quite-perfect compatibility, so everyone making really important documents wants Microsoft Office. That means everyone else in the company needs Microsoft Office too, so they're all compatible and nobody's at risk of being "the guy who broke it".

As long as businesses send documents, they'll want their precious real-deal software to work on them. That lock-in is Microsoft's cash cow. Sure, the minor differences li

This exactly. I wouldn't dream of deploying anything but MS Office to my users. If I did, I'd probably end up in the looney bin cradling my own legs, rocking back and forth, and muttering "compatible... why isn't it compatible?".

MS Office, as well as other critical windows only software, is one of the main things keeping about 20-30% of my IT budget going to Microsoft. If I could add an iPad or macbook to the domain and install outlook on it I'd have a lot of users demanding to work that way; no doubt.

I've been using Open Office / Libre Office for at least 5 years now. It does more than I would ever need it to. Honestly... it has too much. So I don't see how there's even a market anymore for Microsoft Office, cloud or not.

I can see why you'd say that but, believe it or not, some of us have IT departments larger than our mom's basement.

Has "mom's basement" replaced "Library of Congresses" as the Slashdot standard unit of measure (SSUoM)?

Here's one datapoint: my last company had an IT department about the size of my mom's basement to support 1000 users. And we're using MS Office - almost half the company is on Mac's and they use MS Office too.

You missed the keyword: good. I own all three, and Keynote is the only one that's worth anything. I use Numbers to update spreadsheets I want to have on my iPhone because of iCloud functionality, but I'd never use it for anything important.